


Life is Wide

by improbableimpossible (A_Poison_Tree)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Genre: Background Finn/Rey, F/M, Gen, Heavy kotor2 lore, Hux is an anxious wreck, Kylo is a pretty good teacher, Slow Burn, Who knew?, lots of Force Stuff, probably will veer from canon at some point, the regular person in the star wars universe AU that no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 07:57:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6602926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Poison_Tree/pseuds/improbableimpossible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Starkiller, General Hux and Kylo Ren are shoved into the awkward situation of finding the First Order's place within a very changed galaxy. Neither are Snoke's favored children any longer, and so when the chance to present the Supreme Leader with a Force sensitive young woman presents itself, they take it. Turns out, Moira is not from anywhere nearby--and knows far too much about the Force for Hux to be comfortable having her on his ship. Nevertheless, Kylo takes up the mantle of teacher while the galactic political situation simmers ever hotter, and Moira unabashedly embraces the power she's been given. How long can she stand by without using it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life is Wide

Hux yawned, staring at the console in front of him. 13:17 hours. They’d been at this backwater planet for over an hour already, and gone from Snoke’s even further backwater citadel for over six. Nothing catastrophic had happened; no one had died, Ren hadn’t ruined so much as a tray in the mess hall. The General wasn’t sure what, exactly, was going on, but he wasn’t going to question it. He wasn’t even going to move. Hux was going to sit there, in the cockpit of the shuttle that they’d taken down to whatever planet this was, until teams had finished securing the fuel from the spaceport that hummed merrily just beyond the front windows. The only reason he was even here was to escape Phasma’s continued black mood. At least she’d stopped smelling like garbage.

The loss of Starkiller had been a setback, one that Hux was well aware of: events had moved quickly in the weeks following, and he’d spent much of it drafting up plans for the annexation of planets left unstable following the destruction of the Republic. The Resistance had, as their name implied, been resisting at every turn, managing to be frustrating but little more after how costly their victory had been. All the planets that Snoke had initially identified were newly enjoying First Order protection and Hux was regaining some of the pride that Starkiller’s destruction had knocked out of him. The planets ceded willingly; there had been actual diplomatic discussions, and at least one of the planets had initially contacted the First Order. Their organization was a galactic power now, Hux thought. He reveled in it, briefly allowing himself a smile as the line of crew to the ship tapered off. Soon, they would be back in orbit and aboard the _Finalizer_ , speeding towards a potential new base that intelligence had found. Yes, Hux was in a good mood.

That feeling lasted approximately 47 seconds before his comm clicked on, and he sighed. He saw who it was and he sighed again, this time with the addition of his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes, Ren?”

“General Hux,” came the irritatingly inflectionless voice. “I have need of your assistance.”

“With what, Ren?” There was nothing that Ren could possibly need his assistance with, the general thought, and suppressed a third sigh. “I’m busy overseeing the restocking of the shuttle; can’t you get one of the other officers to help?”

“Trust me, General,” Ren practically purred, and Hux felt the beginnings of a headache spread beneath his fingers. “You’ll not want to entrust this to another officer.” He clicked the comm line off.

When the knight got _that_ smug, Hux thought, something of at least mild importance to him had to be involved. When Ren thought something was of mild importance, it usually turned out to be the case that it was either virtually meaningless or absolutely critical, and Hux had never been one to play the odds. He stood, straightening his shirt and swinging his greatcoat over his shoulders. The planet didn’t look particularly cold, but it was dirty, and the more layers protecting him from the grime of the spaceport, the better.

“Bridge Officer Daug,” he called to the brunette digging through a recently arrived box of components. “Please watch the shuttle.”

“Yes sir,” she nodded, taking up Hux’s station in the cushioned seat at the window. Honestly, it was a trade up for her, and Hux was not a little jealous of the fact that she could stay. He finally let out a third sigh as he pulled out the tracker still installed on Ren’s belt and headed that way, shaking his head. This, he thought, had better be good.

“Please repeat what you told me about this woman,” Ren said to the shopkeeper, voice mechanically calm. Hux had watched Ren have fits often enough that Hux knew the tell-tale signs of impatience coursing beneath the knight’s skin. Honestly, the general felt scarcely more patient: apparently, a string of thefts had struck the spaceport, and Ren had taken an interest. This wasn’t, the General had insisted, the business of the First Order, but Ren had merely drug him to this market stall. The proprietor, a scarred looking Wequay, hardly looked the part of a reliable narrator, but Ren was listening intently.

  
“It’s just as I said: she walks right over to Zork over there—” he broke off, gesturing to the shifty, twitchy Rodian next to him, “—and says, she says, you want to give me half your day’s taking.” The Wequay waggled his fingers at Ren. “And Zork just does it. You ask him about it: he says he did, like it was his very own idea.”

  
“And what did she do then?” Ren was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet now, and Hux felt a bit of trepidation drop into his stomach.

“She walked right away. We’ve not seen her again—it was like she disappeared.”

  
“Your scavenger?” Hux asked Ren. The General had a healthy appreciation of the Force, though he privately thought Ren was probably not its best example, and knew well enough what That Girl had done at the base. Phasma was still upset about JB-007’s loss of control of the situation. Hux thought he might be pulling Sanitation duty for the next month at least. Poor bastard. It might have been better if he'd gone down with the base.

  
“What did the woman look like?” Ren said, through gritted teeth. Obviously, he’d not thought to ask that particular question previously, and Hux smiled a bit.

“Ah, right. Human. She had lightish hair, I think, pulled back. Tan skin. Very short. Only came up to Zork’s chin or so. Dressed all in black.”  
Hux shook his head. “Too short. Someone else, then. None of our concern.”

  
Hux could almost feel Ren scowling at him beneath that stupid mask. “She could still be a Force user of some kind, of thus of interest to the Supreme Leader, if not **you**.” Ren said it with such derision that Hux was tempted to walk right back to the shuttle, even though he knew that Ren was right. If they could find a Force user, even a weak one, Snoke would absolutely want to know about it. And if they could acquire her, well. So much the better. Hux hated it when Ren was right.

  
“How would we even find her on this overlarge cantina of a planet?” Hux asked, unwilling to cede without argument.

  
“I could try sensing her,” said Ren, leading the general away from the now forgotten shop owner, who threw his hands up at the abrupt departure of the First Order. He sounded uncertain behind the mask. “Though this space port is…busy.”

  
“We could try asking around,” Hux suggested, jerking his head towards the cantina nearby. “At the very least, they might have a quiet corner for you to…sense her.”

  
Ren started towards the shabby looking prefab building and Hux took that for agreement, wrapping his coat tighter around himself. If he’d known they’d be asking locals for, well, anything, he’d have left the uniform back at the ship. Covert ops were fairly standard for lower-level officers, and though Hux hadn’t needed to participate in fieldwork for quite some time, the first rule of any covert op, so far as he remembered, was to ask around the local watering hole. The propagandists back on the _Finalizer_ had been hard at work convincing the galaxy that the Starkiller weapon had been simply too powerful and that was why it had been allowed to explode, and Hux fervently hoped that the idea had reached here. He absolutely did not want to get stuck in some inane discussion with a backwater bartender about the Resistance besting them—and he rather doubted that the cantina owner wanted the repair bills if Ren got wind of any such discussion. He was still touchy about the situation, not that Hux precisely blamed him. If there was truly a Force user here, one that could be convinced to return with them, it might go a long way to repairing his standing with Snoke. Both of their standings, ideally. He’d no idea what had taken place between the knight and his master during their two-day stay at Snoke’s citadel, and he had a feeling he didn’t want to, if Ren’s unusually meek demeanor was any indication. Hux himself had felt the weight of Snoke’s disappointment, though it was less personal than his disappointment in Ren.

  
The pair slipped into the half-dark of the one room, its walls lined with tables as dusty and well-worn as their inhabitants. “Ah, First Order,” said the bartender over the flap of his leathery wings. “I imagine you’re here about the murders?”

  
“Of course.” The general did not believe in coincidences, and if Kylo was any indication, the introduction of Force user could only be accompanied by a murder, really. Hux approached the bar, and the Toydarian slid him a glass of something that he assumed was the local brew. He ignored it.

“On the house, if you can figure out who committed the crime.”

Hux pretended to take a sip, valiantly not gagging at the olfactory assault. Ren wandered towards one of the darker corners of the bar, practically blending in with the shadows, and Hux turned back towards the alien. “Thank you. Could you tell me a bit about the ah, latest victim?”

  
“Only body, thus far. A tail head—one of the mechanics at the main port shop. He came in daily though, had quite the tab.”

  
That would explain his interest in solving the crime, Hux thought. “Any enemies?”

The bartender snorted. “Any friends, more like. He wasn’t particularly well liked.”

  
“Do you know how he was killed?”

  
The Toydarian fluttered closer to the bar. “It was all very, ah, mysterious. Looked like he was strangled, but no bruises or nothing. He was just dead there, clutching at his throat. We think he was poisoned.”

  
“And what about the other?”

  
“One of my waitresses!” The Toydarian sounded positively irate at the idea. “She was good, too. A pretty little Mirelian. Just disappeared. If you ask me, they’re connected.”

  
Suddenly, Ren was at the bar as well, tugging at Hux’s elbow. “Right, we’ll go take a look around, ask the locals,” Hux promised the bartender, who flicked to another customer at the wraith-like appearance of Ren.

 

“She knows we’re here.” Ren’s grip on his arm was punishing, and Hux yanked away with a scowl.

  
“How?”

 

“She felt me look for her. She’ll be off the planet as soon as she can get on a ship; I felt it.”

 

“Well, I suppose she potentially did murder someone. To the spacedock then?”

Ren nodded quickly and the pair marched that way, the locals happily clearing a path for the two black-clad men. The port was small, and luckily the walk wasn’t a long one, though with the dock as busy as it was Hux privately thought it was a lost cause. The knight next to him, however, took off at a dead run with little notice, leaving him to trail in the knight’s wake. The general dodged between little clumps of people, each more confused than the last, until he finally caught a glimpse of a short young woman running just ahead of Ren. She accelerated beyond what Hux thought was humanly possibly and darted down an alley—followed, of course, by Ren and eventually by a panting Hux.

 

“She’s not even here,” he said between breaths. He’d thought himself still in good shape: clearly, he needed more sessions in the _Finalizer’s_ training areas.

  
“She’s here,” Ren assured him, turning around ridiculously in his robe. He reached up and with a pneumatic hiss, tore off his mask, scowling. Hux briefly wondered how he saw anything at all in that stupid thing. “I can feel her.” With his voice no longer modulated, Hux could tell that he was irritated.

  
Hux threw up his hands and turned around to face the knight. “Well clearly she fucking isn’t, Ren.” He was regretting leaving the shuttle now, murderous Force user or not. This had been a stupid idea.

  
“What do you want with me?” A feminine voice, with an Imperial accent no less, came from over his shoulder. Suddenly there was a woman there, levelling a blaster at the pair of them. She was short, barely up to Hux’s shoulder, he thought, but the weapon trembled a bit in her hand. Her eyes, however, were blazing with something like rage. She wasn’t pretty, Hux decided, but she was _interesting_ looking, with a diamond shaped face that narrowed towards the chin and hairline. Ren, he could tell, was seeing something completely different in her: he looked jumpy, nervous, and he made a mental note to ask him why, later.

  
“Hello,” Ren said awkwardly, trying to be calming and clearly failing. “I’m—”

  
“I know who you are,” she said, cutting him off with a sharp shake of her head. “I know who both of you are, actually,” she added, turning her attention to Hux. “Your ship is almost done loading, by the way, don’t you have better things to be doing than chasing me around a spaceport?”

Privately, Hux completely agreed. “We, ah, heard some reports of a murder…”

She snorted. “Do not tell me that the general of the First Order and the leader of the Knights of Ren are concerned at all with the happenings in this ridiculous little spaceport.”

Ren was staring, eyebrows set in an unfriendly line. “You did murder him.” The knight sounded oddly appalled at the action, considering how much proverbial blood was on his lightsaber. “You’re untrained, unrefined…” Ren started walking towards the woman, who moved the blaster higher. Hux hoped she didn’t have a twitchy trigger finger; he didn’t fancy having to patch Ren up again. At least he stopped walking forward. “You could come with us, be my apprentice.” Hux felt it was rather unfair that he wasn’t consulted on this; he certainly didn’t want a miniature, female Ren training on board the ship. He’d hoped they could convince her to come on board quietly, then sedate her and drop her with Snoke.

The woman made a face, and did not lower the blaster. “I have approximately zero interest in the First Order as an organization, and even less interest in being Snoke’s puppet.”

At this, Hux made a snort of offense. What was wrong, he thought, with the First Order? Maybe this woman was a rebel, though she didn’t seem to have any alliances in general. She did, however, roll her eyes at him. Ren reacted rather more strongly, to Hux’s complete unsurprise. “What, do you think the _Jedi_ will take you in?” He nearly hissed the word.

“I have about as much interest in the Jedi as I do the First Order. I just want to be left alone, actually. So if you two would go back to your ship and leave me to negotiate passage elsewhere, that would be lovely.”

Hux felt that bit of trepidation returning to the pit of his stomach. “Unfortunately, madam, you are not only a murderer, but are potentially unfit to be out and around the people of this spaceport.” Nicely diplomatic, he thought. If she could murder a cantina rat, what else could she do?

She clearly disagreed, giving him a dispassionate stare the likes of which he hadn’t seen since the last time he and Phasma had a go over training schedules. “Oh, and you get to decide that, do you? Just leave me alone, the both of you.”

With that, the knight’s patience was gone, sadly, and Hux felt the heated rush of something as Ren extended his hand. It took a moment longer than normal, but the woman froze in place and dropped the blaster, eyes going wide. They didn’t usually drop the blaster, actually: Hux took this as a sign that whatever training Ren had gone through had improved things. The knight in question walked towards the woman, all unnecessary black fabric and manufactured menace. “You’ll be coming with us, I think.”

Hux realized that something was wrong mere moments before it happened, and far too late to warn Ren: as soon as he was within reach, the woman swung her fist at the knight’s head, connecting with a solid thawk with his nose. The knight howled in pain as blood blossomed beneath his fingertips, and the woman was off like a shot, blaster forgotten as she ran. It was not, however, the superhuman speed of earlier, and it gave Hux a solid amount of time to withdraw his own weapon, switch it to the little-used stun setting, aim and hit the fleeing target squarely between the shoulder blades. She went to her knees silently, then to the ground—much to the surprise of those still milling upon the spaceport. They scattered rather quickly as Hux and the glowering, bloody nosed knight approached the woman’s prone body.

She was limp against the filthy spacedock floor and Hux gingerly rolled her over, then checked to make sure she was still alive. “Well. I suppose we should get her back to the ship.”

“Can you carry her?” That is what Hux supposed the knight was saying, but he was very busily attempting to stem the bloody tide from his face so it came out closer to: “Ban boo barry hur.” The general’s lips twitched and Ren, dignity offended, stormed off, presumably to the shuttle. That, of course, left Hux to attend to their latest acquisition. He felt a bit bad about the whole thing, but gingerly hauled the woman to her feet, then into his arms. She was surprisingly slight, potentially malnourished: he could feel ribs beneath his fingers. He could also feel several sets of eyes on him and he sighed as he realized what this must look like to onlookers.

“We, ah, caught the murderer,” he said, by way of explanation, and damn it he wished Ren had stayed; he was certain that mind trick of his would have made this easier. As it was, the group looked suspicious but not particularly fussed about it, and Hux smiled awkwardly as he began the walk back to the shuttle. He hoped she didn’t wake up on the way: he was in no mood to tangle with a Force user on his own, even a theoretically untrained one.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments are welcome! Hopefully this'll be updated once a week. The romance will be slow burn, and most of the Resistance members (Finn, Rey, Leia) will play their roles in later chapters. Phasma will feature heavily as well, and stuff from the Legends (KotOR 1 and 2 in particular) is going to be very prominent!


End file.
